Lost: Half the series

Lost Series One Part One proves to be a bit of a swizz, The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology is causing much gnashing of teeth, and Christian Bale is getting kitted-out for some nifty baddie-battering in Batman Begins...

Lost Series One Part One****The clue to why this is a bit of a swizz is in the title: Lost Series One Part One is only the first 12 episodes, so you don't even get to brag you're ahead of mere Channel 4 watchers. Why bother, when, with a bit of surfing and a multi-regional player, you could enjoy the US release of the complete first series? Still, at least you get to gawp at that astonishing £11 million pilot episode to your heart's content (here enhanced by a writer and director commentary) and marvel anew at how rapidly things became completely bonkers in this utterly intriguing American series.Extras: Disc Four is this package's main selling point, as it is devoted to extras. The Genesis Of Lost is creator JJ Abrams and co explaining how they came up with the idea; Designing A Disaster charts how that plane ended up in bits on a Hawaiian beach; and Welcome To Oahu shows what the cast and crew were up against in the race to make the pilot. The audition tapes are interesting for obsessives but the deleted scenes are disappointingly dull.

The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology****
Slinky The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology will cause much gnashing of teeth from horror fans who forked out for the Exorcist trilogy in 2002. So what makes it worth the purchase? Well, certainly not Renny Harlin's Exorcist The Beginning (2004), which was ropier than a hangman's washing line. That film supposedly 'explained' what drove the titular Father Merrin to become an exorcist in the first place.

Don't buy it for the dodgy sequels to William Friedkin's still seminal movie where a little girl gets possessed by a demon either. No, what makes it hot is the inclusion of Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist. Written and directed by Paul 'Taxi Driver' Schrader, it has passed into modern movie legend after being cursed as 'not scary enough' by studio bosses (they do have a point), who preferred to reshoot the entire script again rather than let it see the light of day. Until now...Extras: Mainly commentaries.

Batman Begins***
Christian Bale has just the jawline for a Batman mask but in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, it takes a while before he gets to the caped crusading stage. This Bruce Wayne must hit rock-bottom, turning his back on his fortune and his butler (Michael Caine, who provides much-needed light relief) after his parents' murder, before he is rescued by a kickboxing Liam Neeson.

Once trained, it's back to Gotham City for a nifty baddie-battering kit, a couple of capes - and, of course, that all-important mask. Despite the appropriately murky setting, complex plot and Tom Wilkinson and Cillian Murphy in top turns as villains, this is a film of two halves, one rather better than the other. Once the psychological heroism shades into superhero pyrotechnics, the film turns silly - and Nolan is no action director. Extras: A comic, half a dozen featurettes about the genesis of the film and how the characters were created.

Welcome To The Dollhouse****
Welcome To The Dollhouse was our first real introduction to the anarchic world of writer-director Todd Solondz, in which every eccentricity makes a weird kind of sense. His earlier film, Fear, Anxiety & Depression, sank but this 1995 follow-up has the elegant attachment to its barmy characters that would later be put to such disconcertingly hilarious use in Happiness.

Dawn (Heather Matarazzo) is a particularly dysfunctional teen: obnoxious family, no mates (well, one) and a thumping crush on the school heart-throb. Solondz observes beadily as her schoolmates make her life hell; his clearsightedness about the fears and desires of high school kids is frequently horrible but it's gobsmackingly honest and never exploitative. And awkward, terminally geeky Matarazzo is some find. Extras: Todd Solondz's production notes.